Madeline Brewer

There’s no doubt that 25-year-old actress Madeline Brewer (“Call me Maddie,” she insists) is a politically engaged young woman—she starts getting verklempt when considering the notion of a younger generation with no memory of the world before Trump. But she doesn’t choose roles specifically to fight the power. From a cold-blooded soldier in Black Mirror’s foray into war commentary to a casualty of the prison-industrial complex on Orange Is the New Black, her career has been defined by memorable supporting parts with hot-button topicality sprouting incidentally. And with a role in Hulu’s miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, a 30-year-old yarn of government-sanctioned misogyny that now plays like a dark prophecy, she’s taking on her most incendiary project to date. How’s she feeling? Cue the incredulous laughter.

 

EINSTEIN GOT C’S, TOO:

On the afternoon that an NEA-cutting federal budget proposal is unveiled, Brewer gets visibly frustrated when discussing the absolute necessity of the arts. “I did shit in school, absolute shit, I was terrible,” she says. “But I got straight A’s in college, at [New York’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy] on the Upper West Side. All singing, all acting, all dancing, all the time. I excelled because I felt at home in it, like I was finally somewhere I wanted to be. I can’t overstate the importance of arts and music programs. Without those, I don’t know where I’d be.”

PURSUITS OF THE MIND: